cwwgateway wrote:Cinnamon is directly controlled by the Linux Mint team and it will be their exact vision for the desktop

This may be good or bad for a particular user - depends on one's tastes and preferences

cwwgateway wrote:Cinnamon has lots of applets, themes, and extensions

Note that every theme has its own font so you will probably look for a theme that matches your favourite Gtk+ fonts for quite a some time - or edit some theme by yourself.Applets have a few quirks too, for example, Classic Menu tends to change its scrollbars' look depending on the current Cinnamon theme - but never uses the standard Gtk+3 ones, so if you wish to use this applet, you'll probably have to look for a theme that won't make these scrollbars look too ugly.And as for extensions, the "lots" word just has to be removed from that phrase.

I'm not saying one should stay away from Cinnamon because of that, and I'm sure the things will improve someday.But if one has to choose now - for example, between two Mint 13 editions - these shortcomings have to be taken into account.

cwwgateway wrote:Here's a really big one - when all of the popular apps move to GTK 3 (which, whether you like it or not will happen eventually), they will stop working with MATE

MATE (as of Mint 13) already has Brasero and nm-applet, and maybe other Gtk+3 stuff I've missed. They work... they just look a bit out of place because of the differences between the default Gtk+2 and Gtk+3 font/theme/etc. settings.

cwwgateway wrote:MATE still has some bugs, especially with compiz, whereas Cinnamon has 3d effects built in and while it has bugs to fix, a lot of them can be fixed by the Gnome team

On the other hand, people who are unlucky to have ATI video cards may disagree with you. Those who have Intel video cards may join them, depending on what Cinnamon (or Gnome Shell) thinks of their video card.

cwwgateway wrote:Soon Cinnamon will work with software rendering as well as hardware rendering (with llvmpipe), which will bring it on par with MATE in terms of hardware compatibility.

I wouldn't reassure the new users that it will be soon. There's still work to do to make sure it will work stably for everyone.

Hello, I believe this is the first time I've actually posted on the Linux Mint forums so I apologize if this is not the right place to ask such a general question but... What makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2? I've never fully understood what the difference is really. I've been using Maya Cinnamon Edition and I can't help but notice that I could do the exact same things and more with Linux Mint 11. Using Emerald, I could make my desktop look both beautiful and equally powerful and fast. I always assumed that Gnome 3 was meant to update and improve upon Gnome 2 but after using Gnome 3 many times I can't see the improvements. Therefore, to repeat the question, what makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2?

Darkwolfx24678 wrote:Hello, I believe this is the first time I've actually posted on the Linux Mint forums so I apologize if this is not the right place to ask such a general question but... What makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2? I've never fully understood what the difference is really. I've been using Maya Cinnamon Edition and I can't help but notice that I could do the exact same things and more with Linux Mint 11. Using Emerald, I could make my desktop look both beautiful and equally powerful and fast. I always assumed that Gnome 3 was meant to update and improve upon Gnome 2 but after using Gnome 3 many times I can't see the improvements. Therefore, to repeat the question, what makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2?

Thank you for the reply! I read that one and I can definitely see why Cinnamon can be better than Mate in the future, many of those reasons pertaining to continuous development, but what makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2?

Darkwolfx24678 wrote:Thank you for the reply! I read that one and I can definitely see why Cinnamon can be better than Mate in the future, many of those reasons pertaining to continuous development, but what makes Gnome 3 better than Gnome 2?

I think that this is a good time to point out the Gnome 3 vs. Gnome Shell and the Gnome 2 vs. Gnome Panel thing again. With gnome 2, the interface (what you see) is gnome-panel, although everybody called it gnome 2 because there were no other shells/interfaces. With gnome 3, gnome shell is the default interface (look at fedora for example), but gnome 3 itself is apps and libraries and the backend. Cinnamon is an shell (or interface) for Gnome 3. Unity is another one. So Gnome 3 has GTK 3, which is a lot better than GTK 2 (with gnome 2). Inteface-wise, though, a lot of people feel that Gnome Shell is not better than Gnome Panel.

cwwgateway wrote:Cinnamon is directly controlled by the Linux Mint team and it will be their exact vision for the desktop

This may be good or bad for a particular user - depends on one's tastes and preferences I agree, although it is a benefit for Mint.

cwwgateway wrote:Cinnamon has lots of applets, themes, and extensions

Note that every theme has its own font so you will probably look for a theme that matches your favourite Gtk+ fonts for quite a some time - or edit some theme by yourself.Applets have a few quirks too, for example, Classic Menu tends to change its scrollbars' look depending on the current Cinnamon theme - but never uses the standard Gtk+3 ones, so if you wish to use this applet, you'll probably have to look for a theme that won't make these scrollbars look too ugly.And as for extensions, the "lots" word just has to be removed from that phrase. I agree too (the classic menu thing is inherent from the Cinnamon menu and I think on purpose).I'm not saying one should stay away from Cinnamon because of that, and I'm sure the things will improve someday.But if one has to choose now - for example, between two Mint 13 editions - these shortcomings have to be taken into account.Yes. The question I was answering was "what does it do (or will do) that MATE doesn't?"

cwwgateway wrote:Here's a really big one - when all of the popular apps move to GTK 3 (which, whether you like it or not will happen eventually), they will stop working with MATE

MATE (as of Mint 13) already has Brasero and nm-applet, and maybe other Gtk+3 stuff I've missed. They work... they just look a bit out of place because of the differences between the default Gtk+2 and Gtk+3 font/theme/etc. settings. Yes, right now they work. But in 6 months, a year, or more (which is how long it might take for apps to be ported to GTK 3), this compatibility will likely be broken.

cwwgateway wrote:MATE still has some bugs, especially with compiz, whereas Cinnamon has 3d effects built in and while it has bugs to fix, a lot of them can be fixed by the Gnome team

On the other hand, people who are unlucky to have ATI video cards may disagree with you. Those who have Intel video cards may join them, depending on what Cinnamon (or Gnome Shell) thinks of their video card.See next quote.

cwwgateway wrote:Soon Cinnamon will work with software rendering as well as hardware rendering (with llvmpipe), which will bring it on par with MATE in terms of hardware compatibility.

I wouldn't reassure the new users that it will be soon. There's still work to do to make sure it will work stably for everyone.I'll bet that it will Mint 14. In Ubuntu 12.04, llvmpipe was very buggy, which is (I'm guessing) why it wasn't included with Mint 13. In Ubuntu 12.10, however, Unity 2D will go and Unity 3D will get llvmpipe support. This means that the Ubuntu devs will have to make it work, so it will most likely work well with Mint 14. Also, again, the question asked about now or the future, and that will be the future. I suggest you try Fedora 17 with llvmpipe - it works like a charm on almost all graphics cards (just as well as MATE).

I'm personally using Cinnamon at the moment since I personally feel that, at this current time, it will be a step towards the future. I also like that I can quickly use the hot corner to switch between desktops on the fly.

However, I am continuing to follow the development of MATE, and if you check their future Roadmap on the MATE wiki you will see that the developers have plans to eventually start support for GTK3 (listed under Future Releases below 1.6) unless I'm misreading or misinterpreting what is being written.

digitalking wrote:I'm personally using Cinnamon at the moment since I personally feel that, at this current time, it will be a step towards the future. I also like that I can quickly use the hot corner to switch between desktops on the fly.

However, I am continuing to follow the development of MATE, and if you check their future Roadmap on the MATE wiki you will see that the developers have plans to eventually start support for GTK3 (listed under Future Releases below 1.6) unless I'm misreading or misinterpreting what is being written.

realitykid wrote:I much prefer Cinnamon as it feels much more mature than MATE in my opinion. I've had nothing but issues with MATE when I tried it. I think this is due to the fact that MATE is only a fork of Gnome 2, and is trying to preserve Gnome 2 100%. Unfortunately, everyone else is moving on passed Gnome 2 tech. So Cinnamon definitely wins out here for me. I do hope to see MATE mature though. It definitely is a good idea.

MATE is the way to move forward, and keep what people are comfortable with.

Since the release candidate of Mint 13, I have to say that MATE has become much better. However, I still believe that Cinnamon is the way forward. Cinnamon does a pretty good job keeping things relatively familiar while still using up to date tech.

I have used both and in my case the only problem that I had was installing a print driver manually under CUPS using Cinnamon. I was unable to select the driver that I know works. It kept giving me the wrong driver. The printer is an HP color LaserJet CP1525nw. At the HPLIP site this printer is not even listed. Through trial and error, I found that under the HP color laserjet series there is a listing for a PCL 6 CUPS driver which is the same as this printer. (PCL 6) Mate gives me the chance to manually install this driver.

I have to start this by saying I am Pro-Cinnamon. (flame-protection) And I like everything about it, except the following:

I have an Nvidia GTX260 Video Card, Quad-Core Phenom, 8 gigs of RAM.

Loaded up 13 (not a VBox, a real install) with Cinnamon. Something about Cinnamon feels "laggy" Like when I drag windows around the screen, they're a few of milliseconds behind the cursor. The highlighting in the menu seems a bit "laggy" too. It doesn't do this in Gnome-Shell, or Gnome-Classic.

Anyone else having this issue?

Holy Cripes on Toast!Attention is the currency of internet forums. - ticopelp

same here..Just teat ran Cinnamon and all I get is a solid blue screen and my pointer...I tried twice and same problem.

What graphics card do you have?

I wasn't the poster of either of the above messages, but I have the same issue (Mint 13 Cinnamon 32-bit) on a machine with an Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller. From the above discussion it sounds as if waiting for Cinnamon's software rendering support to mature, and going with MATE in the meantime, is the better bet. But please correct me if you think there are alternatives --- I'd love to get Cinnamon running.

And actually, the above machine is really just a test environment, to see what works well before I install it on my laptop (which doesn't have an optical drive, and can't boot from USB, so I want to be pretty sure of what I'm working with before going through the gymnastics required for installing a new OS). That laptop has an Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller, which I assume means it's likely to have the same problems with Cinnamon?

uilenspiegel wrote:From the above discussion it sounds as if waiting for Cinnamon's software rendering support to mature, and going with MATE in the meantime, is the better bet. But please correct me if you think there are alternatives --- I'd love to get Cinnamon running.

Yes, you are correct - the best bet for people who have graphics cards that don't support Cinnamon is to wait for software rendering.

And actually, the above machine is really just a test environment, to see what works well before I install it on my laptop (which doesn't have an optical drive, and can't boot from USB, so I want to be pretty sure of what I'm working with before going through the gymnastics required for installing a new OS). That laptop has an Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller, which I assume means it's likely to have the same problems with Cinnamon?

I don't know if it will have the same problems with Cinnamon, but if you have to go through so much work to install the OS, I'd suggest using MATE to be safe.

Well ... there's something that could allow the use of Cinnamon on those systems with usupported graphic cards: llvmpipeThis is highly experimental, and certainly not for the faint of heart, but if you're in an "adventurous" mood you can try this:

First, let's see if you can use the software renderer in your system. Let's say you are running the Maya Cinnamon edition in compatibility mode (Gnome fallback). Now open a terminal and execute the following command:

Open synaptic and you'll find an update available for gnome-session-bin, gnome-session-fallback..., so update your system.Next thing is to force the use of the software renderer, open a terminal and execute:

Of course, the rendering would be very glitchy because Ubuntu devs still hasn't ported Fedora's patches to mesa, X11 and kernel (and Mint dev team those for muffin to disable shadows and other bling) to make it run smooth.